Dynamo, Episode 1: BIT 313-A [Alternative YouTube link]:

In which the Amazingly Bearded Man (ABM) wards off the Flesh Bats, and Ava makes bad decisions.

An ambitious, distinctly offbeat web-based science fiction series. It looks amazingly polished for something produced on a budget that probably wouldn't pay for a single day's catering service on Michael Bay's next Transformers movie.

It feels a bit like a cross between Max Headroom, Terry Gilliam and Twin Peaks. All of which are good things, to my mind. Four episodes in and I'm hooked.

[Via MetaFilter]

Remember Isaac's Live Lip-Dub Proposal that I linked to the other week? A huge feel-good moment, thanks to a cast of thousands singing along and dancing to a Bruno Mars track as they helped Isaac propose to his girlfriend Amy.

If you bookmarked the copy on YouTube then you'll find that it's disappeared, thanks to a copyright request. The scary thing, as Andy Baio has noticed, is that one of the organisations listed as being responsible for the video's removal is Scripps Local News. As far as he can see, all Scripps did was produce news shows which included a clip of Isaac and friends' original video in a news report on the story of Isaac's elaborate proposal. Trouble is, YouTube's content detection system apparently isn't clever enough to notice which came first.

As Andy Baio also points out, it's harder to dispute that Warner Music Group, whose artist Bruno Mars created the song to which Isaac was lip-synching, have a stronger claim to block the video. That's a different debate, though. The truly worrying issue here is that it looks as if YouTube's system effectively operates on the assumption that any major commercial media outlet must have some prior claim to content flagged as being a copy of/similar to someone's copyrighted content, regardless of the actual sequence of events.

Fortunately (for now) Isaac's video is still up on Vimeo, among other places.

Andy Baio has been looking into how difficult it is to post a cover song on YouTube and stay within the law:

We all break laws. Every day, millions of people jaywalk, download music, and drive above the speed limit. Some laws are obscure, others are inconvenient, and others are just fun to break.

There are millions of cover songs on YouTube, with around 12,000 new covers uploaded in the last 24 hours. Nearly 40,000 people covered "Rolling in the Deep," 11,000 took on "Pumped Up Kicks," 6,000 were inspired by "Somebody That I Used to Know."

Until recently, all but a sliver were illegal, considered infringement under current copyright law. Nearly all were non-commercial, created out of love by fans of the source material, with no negative impact on the market value of the original.

This is creativity criminalized, quite possibly the most popular creative act that's against the law. [...]

Baio reports that YouTube negotiated a blanket license with the National Music Publishers Association last year that potentially covers the rights held by thousands of publishers. Unfortunately, as the NMPA doesn't publish a list of which publishers and songs are covered the existence of the agreement it is of no real help to an amateur musician who would like to protect themselves by ensuring that they stick to tracks covered by the agreement.¹

Basically, a user has to decide if they're willing to upload their performance and risk losing their YouTube account if they're branded a copyright infringer once too often. Which is ridiculous, but (IMHO) not just the fault of the music industry. Presumably YouTube know which publishers and songs are covered by the NMPA agreement: once their software identifies an upload as a cover version, presumably it could flag up for the user that their track doesn't appear to be covered by the NMPA license and give them a chance to take it down immediately or confirm that they hold some form of license. But that would put YouTube in a position where they might share liability with the user if it turned out they didn't hold a license, so it's much better not to ask too closely about the tracks being uploaded, keep everyone in the dark and leave it all on the user if the publishers take exception to what's been uploaded.

Ridiculous.

1. If they even know the agreement exists. Had you ever heard of it before Andy Baio mentioned it? I know I hadn't. ↩

Mike Solomon, one of YouTube's original engineers, has learned a great deal about scalability over the last seven years:

Jitter – Add Entropy Back into Your System
[...] Systems have a tendency to self synchronize as operations line up and try to destroy themselves. Fascinating to watch. You get slow disk system on one machine and everybody is waiting on a request so all of a sudden all these other requests on all these other machines are completely synchronized. This happens when you have many machines and you have many events. Each one actually removes entropy from the system so you have to add some back in.

Also (this one is my favourite)…

Cheating – Know How to Fake Data
[...] The fastest function call is the one that doesn't happen. When you have a monotonically increasing counter, like movie view counts or profile view counts, you could do a transaction every update. Or you could do a transaction every once in awhile and update by a random amount and as long as it changes from odd to even people would probably believe it's real. Know how to fake data.

[Via Snarkmarket]

Scott Pilgrim should have taken the blue pill.

[Via GromBlog]

Simon's Cat in 'The Box'.

(Previously. And again.)

[Via orbyn.blog]

Robot Mouth, or new Doctor Who villain?

[Via orbyn.blog]

YouTube Closes Down For The Night. Strangely soothing, that music…

[Via Qwghlm]

How will The Beatles be remembered in the year 3000?

[Via The Technium]

17 seconds of concentrated cuteness.¹

[Via Chocolate and Vodka]

1. Yes, it's a kitten video. An awesomely cute kitten video. And your point is…? ↩

100,000 years of Japanese history in 8 minutes.

[Via GromBlog]

Q. What if Charlie Chaplin had been given the script for The Matrix?

A. We'd have been invited to choose the grey pill, witnessed a bullet time pie fight, and seen Morpheus teach Neo how to box. Whoa!

[Via MetaFilter]

I wish Kelly Clarkson would record a studio version of her cover of Seven Nation Army.

[Via Idolator]

I could have sworn that I'd posted a link to this film of Arcade Fire playing in a lift for La Blogothèque's Take-Away Show a couple of years ago.

Better late than never…

[Via iamcal]

28 Days Later, in One Minute, in One Take.

Also, Kill Bill Parts 1 & 2, in One Minute, in One Take (and titles).

[Via GromBlog]

Alexa Chung helps President Obama explain his health insurance reform proposals with a little help from Auto-Tune.

[Via James Fallows]

Not that anyone should ever consider taking fashion advice from me, but I'm guessing that Winkers aren't going to conquer the catwalk or the high street any time soon.¹

[Via Screenshot]

1. Don't stop watching the video until you've seen the ducks! ↩

If David Lynch directed Dirty Dancing…

[Via David Rothon, posting at Word Magazine Blog]

I'm sure I remember seeing at least one episode of Roommates (episodes 1, 2, 3) back when it was first posted, but I don't seem to have linked to it here at the time.

A 2009 remake/sequel would presumably feature the addition of a next door neighbour called Bing with a flashy car, a plush apartment and an urge to make new friends. Whether this would make 'Google' seem a more or less sympathetic character is left as an exercise for the reader…

[Via swissmiss]

Beware: if you stare at Ames' Window for too long you could break your brain.

[Via kottke.org]